PROLOG

       This  manual  page  is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of this interface
       may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the  interface
       may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       lchown — change the owner and group of a symbolic link

SYNOPSIS

       #include <unistd.h>

       int lchown(const char *path, uid_t owner, gid_t group);

DESCRIPTION

       The  lchown()  function  shall  be  equivalent  to  chown(), except in the case where the named file is a
       symbolic link. In this case, lchown() shall change the ownership of the symbolic link file itself,  while
       chown() changes the ownership of the file or directory to which the symbolic link refers.

RETURN VALUE

       Upon  successful  completion,  lchown()  shall  return  0. Otherwise, it shall return −1 and set errno to
       indicate an error.

ERRORS

       The lchown() function shall fail if:

       EACCES Search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix of path.

       EINVAL The owner or group ID is not a value supported by the implementation.

       ELOOP  A loop exists in symbolic links encountered during resolution of the path argument.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              The length of a component of a pathname is longer than {NAME_MAX}.

       ENOENT A component of path does not name an existing file or path is an empty string.

       ENOTDIR
              A component of the path prefix names an existing file that is neither a directory nor  a  symbolic
              link  to  a  directory,  or the path argument contains at least one non-<slash> character and ends
              with one or more trailing <slash> characters and the last pathname  component  names  an  existing
              file that is neither a directory nor a symbolic link to a directory.

       EPERM  The  effective  user  ID  does  not  match  the  owner  of  the file and the process does not have
              appropriate privileges.

       EROFS  The file resides on a read-only file system.

       The lchown() function may fail if:

       EIO    An I/O error occurred while reading or writing to the file system.

       EINTR  A signal was caught during execution of the function.

       ELOOP  More than {SYMLOOP_MAX} symbolic links were encountered during resolution of the path argument.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              The length of a pathname exceeds {PATH_MAX}, or pathname resolution of a symbolic link produced an
              intermediate result with a length that exceeds {PATH_MAX}.

       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES

   Changing the Current Owner of a File
       The  following example shows how to change the ownership of the symbolic link named /modules/pass1 to the
       user ID associated with ``jones'' and the group ID associated with ``cnd''.

       The numeric value for the user ID is obtained by using the getpwnam() function. The numeric value for the
       group ID is obtained by using the getgrnam() function.

           #include <sys/types.h>
           #include <unistd.h>
           #include <pwd.h>
           #include <grp.h>

           struct passwd *pwd;
           struct group  *grp;
           char          *path = "/modules/pass1";
           ...
           pwd = getpwnam("jones");
           grp = getgrnam("cnd");
           lchown(path, pwd->pw_uid, grp->gr_gid);

APPLICATION USAGE

       On  implementations  which  support  symbolic  links as directory entries rather than files, lchown() may
       fail.

RATIONALE

       None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       chown(), symlink()

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, <unistd.h>

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition,
       Standard  for  Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
       Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,  Inc
       and  The  Open Group.  (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the event
       of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard,  the  original
       IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
       http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have  been  introduced
       during   the   conversion  of  the  source  files  to  man  page  format.  To  report  such  errors,  see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .